Comparison with Dennett's ideas

Daniel Dennett [Den03] writes about The evolution of
freedom. I agree with him that free will is a result of evolution.
It may be based on a more basic ability to predict something about
what future will result from the occurrence of certain events
including actions. He compares determinism and
inevitability, and makes definitions so that in a deterministic
world, not all events that occur are inevitable. He considers that
freedom evolves in such a way as to make more and more events
evitable, especially events that are bad for the organism.

Dennett's ideas and those of this paper are in the same direction and
somewhat overlap. I think SDFW is simpler, catches the intuitive
concepts of freedom and free will better, and are of more potential
utility in AI.

Consider a species of animal with eyes but without a blink reflex.
Every so often the animal will be hit in the eye and suffer an injured
cornea. Now suppose the species evolves a blink reflex. Getting hit
in the eye is now often evitable in Dennett's sense. However, it is
not an exercise of free will in my sense.2 On the other hand, deciding
whether or not to go through some bushes where there was a danger of
getting hit in the eye on the basis of weighing the advantages against
the dangers would be an exercise of free will in my sense. It would
also be an evitability in Dennett's sense.

Evitability assumes that there is a normal course of events some of
which may be avoided, e.g. that getting hit in they eye is normal and
is avoided by the blink reflex. My notion of free will does not
involve this, because the choice between actions and is
symmetric. It is interesting to ask when there are normal events that
can sometimes be avoided.

The converse of an evitability is an opportunity. Both depend on a
distinction between an action and non-action. In the case of
non-action, nature takes its course.